Various brain regions work together during the decision-making process.

In a recent Psychology Today blog post, “What Triggers Cravings?," I wrote about the latest scientific research surrounding cravings and addiction. Neuroscience suggests that addressing the decision-making process itself is key to breaking bad habits and addiction.

Understanding the neuroscience behind making a decision can be helpful when targeting new behaviors and changing bad habits. When you reach a fork in the road and need to make the right decision for your long-term health and well-being, using the brain science behind decision-making is a useful tool.

Hopefully, having a better understanding of the neuroscience behind decision-making will help you make decisions that lead to positive outcomes in the future and avoid self-destructive choices fueled by substance abuse, if you're an addict.

Decision-making is in the locus of your control. You have the power to break patterns of behavior simply by making better decisions. You can change your mind and your actions at any time. Even when you're stuck in a cycle of rut-like thinking and behavior, a change of attitude and decision-making can turn your life around.

Based on the importance of all types of decision-making in our lives, I’ve compiled the latest research on the neuroscience of making a decision in this blog post. Below is a “meta-analysis” of various research on the neuroscience of making a decision and some advice on how-to make better decisions using mindfulness.

Is Addiction a Pathology of Poor Decision-Making?

There is a growing contingent of researchers who believe that addiction is a pathology of poor decision-making caused by abnormal interactions between various brain regions responsible for making decisions based on potential outcomes.

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Philip K. Dick once said, "Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error of judgement." The latest neuroscientific findings on addiction show that faulty brain connections related to decision-making can lead to addictive behaviors and relapse.

Alain Dagher, PhD, from McGill University, is leading a charge to shift the focus on cravings and addiction towards abnormalities in the decision-making regions of the brain.

Dagher's research shows that craving a drug such as nicotine can literally be illuminated using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). When the brain is determining the value and cost of specific actions, the perceived value of smoking a cigarette activates the brain areas used for decision-making in people who are addicted to nicotine.

In particular, a brain region called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was found to regulate cigarette craving in response to smoking cues. The degree of nicotine cravings and addiction was reflected by the intensity of the brain imaging response. The fMRI results succesfully predicted subsequent addictive behavior and smoking habits.

Dagher's findings suggest that addiction may result from aberrant connections between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and other brain regions in individuals who are more susceptible to compulsive or addictive behavior.

The Striatum Is a Decision-Making Hub

A February 2015 study, from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) Graduate University in Japan, found that a key part of the brain involved in decision-making, called the striatum, appears to operate hierarchically within its three different sub-regions.

The striatum is part of the basal ganglia, which makes up the inner core of the brain and processes both decision-making and subsequent actions. Neuroscientists divide the striatum into three regions: 1. Ventral (VS) 2. Dorsomedial (DMS) and 3. Dorsolateral (DLS). Each region plays a distinctive role in: 1. Motivation 2. Adaptive Decisions and 3. Routine Actions, respectively.

The findings of this study, "Distinct Neural Representation in the Dorsolateral, Dorsomedial, and Ventral Parts of the Striatum during Fixed- and Free-Choice Tasks," were published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

In an unexpected twist, the researchers at OIST found the three parts of the striatum work together in a coordinated hierarchy. Although the three different regions in the striatum have distinct roles, they ultimately harmonize and work together in different phases of decision-making.

In an animal experiment, the ventral striatum (VS) was most active at the beginning of a decision-making process. The dorsomedial striatum (DMS) changed firing levels next, as the expected reward or consequence by making the decision to turn left or right in a maze was considered. Lastly, the dorsolateral striatum (DLS) fired short bursts at varying times throughout the task, suggesting it is gearing up the motor movements required once a decision is made and action is taken.

The findings suggest that the rats in the experiment analyzed the potential benefit of choosing the left or right turn during the DMS phase. This analysis was constantly updated after each trial run. To the researchers' surprise, there was little difference in DMS and DLS firing during fixed or free-choice tasks in this study. These animal studies offer clues for the windows of opportunity humans have for better decison-making.

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The Prefrontal Cortex Shows Activation During All Decision-Making

In 2014, researchers in Switzerland discovered that the prefrontal cortex not only shows increased activity during decisions requiring self-control, but during all decision-making processes. Sarah Rudorf and Todd Hare of the Department of Economics of the University of Zurich were able to identify specific regions of the prefrontal cortex that are most active in the process of making a decision.

The study, “Interactions between Dorsolateral and Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Underlie Context-Dependent Stimulus Valuation in Goal-Directed Choice," was published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Previous studies have shown that a specific network in the brain is active when a person has to decide between various choices in different situations. This research emphasizes the importance of the interaction between neurons in two different brain areas within the prefrontal cortex.

The results of this study indicate that the neuronal interactions between the dorsolateral and ventromedial prefrontal cortex not only play a central role when a person needs to decide between several options during goal-directed behavior, but are also active during flexible decision-making.

These findings refute a previous belief that activation of the prefrontal cortex only occurs when self-control is required during decision-making between conflicting preferences. In a press release, lead author Sarah Rudorf explained,

Decisions that require self-control are extremely important, as they directly affect a person's bodily, social, or financial welfare. The determination of the mechanisms in the brain that are not only involved in decisions requiring self-control but that are also used in general decisions could open new points of interaction for therapies.

The findings of this research could help develop interventions that support certain decision-making skills in difficult situations that depend on self-control, such as, substance abuse.

Conclusion: Mindfulness Can Help You Avoid Self-Destructive Decision-Making

A 2013 study found that 15-minutes of mindfulness meditation can help people make smarter choices. The findings from the Wharton School of business where published in the journal Psychological Science.

A series of studies led by Andrew Hafenbrack found that mindfulness helped counteract deep-rooted tendencies and lead to better decision-making. The researchers found that a brief period of mindfulness allowed people to make more rational decisions by considering the information available in the present moment, which led to more positive outcomes in the future.

The next time that you need to make a decision, take a few deep breaths and think about the the pros and cons of your next move in a pragmatic and mindful way. Then, do the right thing for your well-being.

Using mindfulness could give various regions of your striatum and prefrontal cortex time to relay the true "neuroeconomic" costs of a decision and help you make smarter choices. Mindful decision-making can derail compulsive or addictive patterns of behavior and take you down a path that's in your best interest for long-term health, happiness, and overall well-being.

If you'd like to read more on this topic, check out my Pscyhology Today blog posts,

1. Stock market: Let's say two people invest money in the stock market. The first person invests all their money into one stock. When their stock is up, they have more worth, and when it is down, they have less worth. If the person put money in a stock that is slow to change, with a gradual gain, they can be comfortable with their stock, however, they could put their money in a stock with lots of ups and downs, causes lots of stress.

The other person diversifies their portfolio into many different stocks to level off the ups and downs and to consistently build wealth.

This is the same self-worth. A person who places all their self-worth into one aspect, like being a real man, how much money they have, their looks, one skill they have, are bound to have extreme highs and lows based on that one aspect. A man whose worth is based on being a real man, when his manliness is challenged, it is a real threat, and must retaliate as if it is life-or-death. But a person whose self-worth is diversified can easily withstand a drop in one aspect they value. They can move around their self-worth to aspects that are doing better. They have a fluid self-worth and a rigid one.

2. Electrons: Electrons always move from negative potentials to positive potentials. The same is true for humans. We are drawn towards positives and resists going negative. It is important to understand that positives and negative situations are subjective and not objectives (see multimeter example).

3. Multimeter: When measuring voltage, one uses a multimeter. A multimeter has two leads, the first is for the point of reference, which is usually ground, a universal constant, and the second is the point of measure, or interest. The point is you don't just touch the point of measure with a device and it knows the value. The point of measure gets its value by comparing it to the reference point of ground or zero. So a point that is 12 volts is 12 volts higher than the point of reference, usually ground. However, if you place the reference lead to a point 6 volts less than ground and the measure lead to a point 6 volts higher, the result is still 12 volts. One must be aware what the actually reference is. The same is true with people. Situations gain their values based on comparing it to another situation. A person who makes 40,000 dollars will see an opportunity to make 50,000 as a positive, while a person making 60,000 will see making 50,000 as a negative.

When a person is talking about focusing on threats, they are talking about adding more weight or value to negatives of a potentially positive situation (stock market example) which makes the situation seem like a negative to the individual by comparison to their current situation (multimeter example) and since it seems negative, the individual with resist moving towards it, and not develop, but stay in their current situation. But, by narrowing your focus only on positives, you could, in fact, view an objectively negative situation as positive by ignoring those negative qualities and hyper focusing on benefits, which you are then drawn to and take action to achieve.

One good example is that of the anorexic. An anorexics self worth has been narrowed down to only the individual weight. Nothing else in their life matters, not friends, or family, or dating, or fun, only their weight. The thinner they are the more value they perceive they have. To others, the fact that the anorexic doesn't eat is their biggest problem, but to the anorexic, not eating is their solution, the method used to achieve the desired result, thinner. They have ignored all the negatives of this situation, that the end result is a complete shutdown of their body.

The addict does the same. They ignore all the negative aspects of using their drugs, how it effects friends and family, their health, wealth, job, everything, just to feel high (the subjective positive). "

Genetics creates our brain and our brains our created in such a way that allows us to narrow our focus, ignore certain aspects, compare and create value for a given object, and provides the negative to positive motion necessary for human life, but for the average person, in the average psychologist, understanding how our brains creates and maintains the system is of little importance. It is more important to focus on how widen our focus to see the world in more objective ways, to make better decisions, avoid addictions, live life more free of mental disorders.

This article was very eye-opening for me. I am definitely one to make very rash decisions and I often find myself looking back wishing I had made a different one. After considering your article, I will most certainly make a conscious effort to put more thought into each decision that I make. Thank you for sharing!